Sunday, June 20, 2010

KANISHKA DISASTER---SALIENT POINTS OF MAJOR COMMISSION REPORT (7)

B.RAMAN

( In 2006, the Canadian Government had appointed a Commission of Inquiry headed by former Supreme Court justice John Major to enquire into the crash of an aircraft of Air India named Kanishka on June 23,1985. The crash was caused by an explosive device suspected to have been planted in a piece of unaccompanied baggage by Sikh extremists belonging to the Babbar Khalsa headed by the late Talwinder Singh Parmar of Vancouver, Canada. The report of the Commission was released on June 17, 2010. The Commission has found that a "cascading series of errors" by the Government of Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service allowed the terrorist attack to take place.This is the seventh instalment of relevant extracts from the report.)

The November 1984 Plot is a similar instance of a pre-bombing failure tointegrate important information into the mosaic of threats. In September 1984,the RCMP learned, through “Person 1,” that Sikh extremists were organizing tobomb an Air India plane but failed to share this information with its own HQ,with CSIS or with other agencies. CSIS did not learn of the existence of thisplot until late October 1984, when the Vancouver Police Department receivedessentially the same information from “Person 2”, which it then shared withCSIS and with the RCMP. The RCMP, however, failed to inform CSIS that thisinformation constituted corroboration of earlier information from anotherindependent source, Person 1.

CSIS was aware of several threats against Air India during the month of October1984 and, prior to learning of Person 2’s information, issued a threat assessmentnoting that an attack in Canada was remote but could not be ruled out.

After receiving Person 2’s information, CSIS updated its assessment to a “realpossibility” that Sikhs would damage an Air India plane.

It was not until March 1986, when the RCMP performed a post-bombing fi lereview, that Person 1’s statement to police in September 1984 about a man inDuncan who could manufacture “nitro” for blowing up an Air India fl ight cometo light. If CSIS had received this information in the pre-bombing period, thesignifi cance of the excursion by Parmar and Duncan resident Inderjit SinghReyat into the woods near Duncan would have undoubtedly been assessed ina more sinister light.

This chain of events dramatically illustrates the role that corroboratinginformation can have on the threat assessment process. It also highlights howa lack of all relevant information can result in a serious potential threat beingdisregarded.

Quite aside from the information provided by Bartleman and intelligence aboutthe June 1st Telex and the November Plot, there were other key pieces of themosaic in the possession of government agencies that CSIS never received andtherefore couldn’t use in its threat assessment.

After the close of the hearings, the Commission became aware of relevantinformation in the possession of the Communications Security Establishment.CSE information is subject to rigorous National Security Confi dentialityrequirements, and little detail can be revealed about this information exceptthat the information indicated that specifi c security measures, substantiallysimilar to those listed in the June 1st Telex, were to be undertaken inside andoutside of India for Air India fl ights due to threats of sabotage and hijacking bySikh extremists. Furthermore, Indian airports were undertaking security auditsin response to the threats and the Government of India had shown an increasedinterest in the security of airports against the Sikh terrorist threat in the monthof June 1985. This latter fact would have clearly called into question RCMP andTransport Canada offi cials’ view that threats, such as the June 1st Telex, wereprovided by Air India solely as a means to obtain additional security for free.

This additional information might, in itself, seem unremarkable, but in thecontext of the June 1st Telex, as well as other information known to agencies ofthe Canadian government in June 1985, it should have suggested a signifi cantrisk of a bomb attack on an Air India fl ight in June 1985. There is no record of the CSE information being provided to CSIS.

The June 1st Telex and the CSE information were more than enough, had theybeen assembled in one place and assessed by a skilled analyst, to have mandatedan upgrading of security and the implementation of responsive measures atPearson and Mirabel airports and, arguably, at airports with connecting fl ightsto Air India, so as to respond to a high threat of sabotage by bombs concealedin checked baggage. The Commission accepts the expert evidence given at theInquiry that, even on its own, the June 1st Telex clearly should have led to thisupgrade in security. ( To be continued)